


Human Connection

by Sholio



Category: White Collar
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Spoilers, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2013-02-01
Packaged: 2017-11-27 20:16:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/666074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene for 4x12 - spoilers! Neal wasn't sure how he ended up on June's curb in the warm summer night, hailing a cab to take him to the hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Human Connection

Neal wasn't planning to go to the hospital that night. There was no reason to; Peter was unconscious, and Elizabeth would be with him, and it was better by far to devote his energy to bringing down Pratt.

(And if keeping himself busy kept him from thinking about things, well, all the better.)

But there came a time, long after midnight, when Mozzie had gone, and Neal had laid out his suit for tomorrow and finished all the prepwork on the architectural model. Everything was done that needed to be done, but his brain was still going in circles and he was far, far from sleep. He drank another glass of wine, and looked at the bed, but couldn't imagine actually _going_ to bed.

At this rate, he was going to be useless in the morning, on the very day when he needed to be at the top of his game. Still, he couldn't say how he ended up on June's curb in the warm summer night, hailing a cab to take him to the hospital.

He would just stop in briefly, he told himself: stop in, check on Peter, make sure his condition hadn't deteriorated (that happened, didn't it? sometimes?). And then he would go home and sleep.

It was long after visiting hours, but that was no problem for Neal Caffrey, con-artist extraordinaire. He left a series of duty nurses believing he was a new intern, and hid his suit under a set of scrubs that he snatched from a basket of clean laundry, then lifted a stethoscope from a shelf to make himself look more convincing. (Peter didn't have to know. And he was totally putting them back.)

On Peter's floor, he faltered for the first time. The floor nurse was helping a resident with a patient. He'd just peek in -- be quick -- make sure Peter wasn't hooked up to a bunch of new worrisome machines, or anything ...

A quick glance through the glass front of the door let him know that Peter was still unconscious, as before. He was also alone; they'd apparently either kicked Elizabeth out when visiting hours ended, or convinced her to go home and get some food and sleep. Or maybe she'd just got up to get some coffee from the machine.

Well, there was no reason why Peter needed anyone to sit with him, anyway. It wasn't like he was dying. 

A nurse appeared at the end of the hall. Neal very quickly and quietly slipped into the room. Just for a minute. Because he'd come all this way, after all. He pulled the privacy curtain partway closed, as if some nurse or resident had left it that way. Not enough to raise suspicions that something untoward was happening, and they could still see him if they looked in at just the right angle.

But it was the middle of the night, and nothing was happening. No one would bother.

The only sound in the room was the beeping of Peter's heart monitor. It reminded Neal a little too much of that awful time when Mozzie was shot. And there had been a few moments, today, that had come a little too close to that for comfort. The sharp crunch over the phone, followed by the line going dead -- he'd looked up, looked into Diana's eyes, and saw his own raw terror reflected there.

It could so easily have gone a different way. So very easily. Elizabeth could have received a visitor with much worse news.

Neal realized, distantly, that his legs had begun to shake. He caught himself on the back of the chair beside the bed and sank into it.

Up close, the bruising and abrasions were more obvious, all across the left side of Peter's face and down under his scrub top. A gash along his hairline was butterfly-stitched shut.

One of Mozzie's quotes came to Neal, out of nowhere. He couldn't remember the exact wording, but he remembered the gist: _Loving someone means that when they bleed, you bleed._

Neal was bleeding now.

Every choice he made was wrong. Trying to keep Peter out of it in the first place had been wrong, or so he'd come to believe; he'd done nothing but sow distrust between them. And this -- this had felt _right_ : that weightless jumping-off-a-building feeling of finally telling the truth, being open about everything, keeping Peter in the loop. And now ... now Peter was lying in a hospital bed (which could so easily have been a slab in the morgue), and Elizabeth was angry at him, and Neal felt like he was drowning in a sea of guilt and uncertainty. There was no Peter to pull him out of it.

There had almost been no Peter at all, no Peter ever again.

Neal brushed the backs of his fingers very lightly across Peter's cheek on the uninjured side.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, so softly that he could barely hear himself.

There was no point in being here, nothing that he could do here that he couldn't do at home. Peter was deeply unconscious -- sedated, they'd said earlier, and doped for pain; he wasn't expected to wake up before the next morning at the earliest. Peter had no idea he was here. Peter would never know that he had been here. There was no way he could help, and equally, no points he could score, no one he could impress, no way to shave a few days off his sentence by sitting here.

But somehow, as he sat beside Peter's bed in the dim room, listening to Peter's slow, steady breathing, Neal felt his own breathing begin to calm. His own heart rate settled into the rhythm of the pulse monitor; his own breaths matched to Peter's even ones.

Hesitantly -- because no one would ever know, there was no one to catch him -- Neal put out a hand and laid it on Peter's chest, over his heart. Seeing it on the monitor was helpful. Feeling it was better. Peter's heartbeat was steady and strong, and his chest was warm.

Neal closed his eyes, blanked his mind, and allowed himself to drift on the steady thump of Peter's heartbeat.

A sharp clatter in the hall -- a nurse dropping something -- made his head snap up. He'd almost fallen asleep. Even as wired as he'd been earlier, he felt the soft tug of sleep now, pulling him down. Stupid to sleep here ... though he did eye the empty second bed at the side of the room ... but no; he needed to be at home, where he could shower and shave and put himself together in the morning to set a trap for a man he needed to bring down.

Neal withdrew his hand from Peter's chest and rose. Peter stirred, turning his head slightly to Neal's side of the bed -- and Neal froze, a guilty jerk as if he'd been caught with a priceless painting in his hands. Peter wasn't supposed to wake up.

Peter stirred again, and twitched, restless. Neal laid a hand on his arm. "Calm down," he said softly. "It's all right. Diana and I are all over the bad guys, and El will be back in the morning."

It wasn't the words -- it had to be coincidence, and he knew it; Peter was too deeply sedated to be aware of his presence -- but Peter stilled, settling back into the rhythm of deep, healing sleep once again.

"I'm going to get that bastard, Peter." Then he hesitated. "No. _We're_ going to get him. We'll finish what we started."

Even if he had to finish the rest of it alone.

El had told him to keep Peter out of it. And he was going to try. This was his mess to clean up, not Peter's. He'd tried to keep Peter out, and Peter got involved anyway. It was time to try again. Harder.

Even if it meant lying to Peter. He'd never looked Peter in the eyes and lied to him. By now, he wasn't even sure if he had the knack for it.

He wasn't sure, but he'd try -- he'd try, because even if Peter saw straight through him, and hated him, Peter would be alive, and that was worth it. Worth anything.

_I won't let you suffer for the mistakes James made._

He didn't want to go, but he was falling asleep as he stood. Neal pulled his hand away, his fingers trailing across Peter's forearm, taking a final measure of comfort from the warmth and solidity that he found there. And Peter twitched, turning his head toward Neal, eyes closed, before settling back into sleep.

_He doesn't know you're here,_ Neal thought, but there was a part of him that didn't believe it. Peter always knew where he was.


End file.
